


Brothers

by prittyspeshul



Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, all relationships implied - Freeform, outsider pov on relationships, smol angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 10:25:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4621809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prittyspeshul/pseuds/prittyspeshul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some bonds run too deep ever to be severed. Then again, some bonds run too deep ever to be repaired, either.</p><p>[semi-introspective piece on Dean and Roman moving forward after Seth's betrayal; implied past Ambrollins]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brothers

They had been brothers.

Really, when Roman thought about it, they were brothers from the start. They found their way to each other early, and even though they were very different people, something clicked, and something great (and terrible) (and powerful) was forged.

They had always been brothers, and they always would be, no matter what, even if he wanted to rip his deceitful intestines out through his eyes and strangle him with them and tear out that stupid blonde streak and shove it down his throat. Some bonds could never totally be scrubbed away, even if you scrubbed yourself raw (as over and over and over again he tried to); that showed in the heat of the moment, when months after he’d shredded their bond with chairs and concrete and pinfall, they worked together, reunited and strong as they ever had been.

For that moment, they forgot themselves. But then that moment passed, and they turned on him, and it was two against one (against the unbreakable wall of Authority he had traded them for).

The loneliness that flashed in his eyes when he saw their united front dredged up a wave of pity that only made him want to strangle the bastard all the more.

 

They had been brothers, but he knew for the other two, there was something else, something that he didn’t quite understand and wasn’t sure he wanted to.

He understood enough to recognize that was reason Dean was slumped against the wall of the hotel room, surrounded by (many more than usual) crushed beer cans and cigarettes, barely awake but still dragging away on the stub of a filter that had long since gone out and singed his fingers for the efforts. He was the Lunatic Fringe, and the crazy was all anyone else saw (he wore it like a coat, one that fit him almost too well), but the madness in his eyes as he raised them tonight was different. This was wild crazy, sad crazy, hurt to the core in a way that made his brother's stomach knot and his fists clench.

And when he lurched tonight it was with real alcohol in his system instead of feint, and Roman wasn’t sure what to do because no one ever knows what a wounded animal will do (and in this moment Dean was an animal, a bundle of exposed nerves and big terrifying hurt), but of all the things he imagined, crumpling into his shoulder and breaking with the force of emotion he didn’t want to name wasn’t really one of them. But he held him up and patted his back (he thought of his daughter) until the tidal wave had surged and crested and finally receded.

(They were brothers, and he cleaned him up and put him to bed and in the morning he was bravado and bleary cheer in his hangover, and they never spoke of it again.)

They had all been brothers, but the others—they had been something else.

 

They were brothers, and so he recognized the beginnings of healing far before anyone else did. It was the way his eyes softened (just a little, just enough) when the pretty interviewer walked by, the way the haunted, hungry expression would dim. Dean would tell him later her name was Renee, and Roman would smile for just long enough that Dean would catch it and find an excuse not to talk to him for two days. It was the calm contentment and jokes he would toss in the gym after the days she asked to join them for lunch and squeezed his hand when she left, and it was the way the tension in his face melted when, just to test, Roman mentioned her. It wasn’t the same, by far, and it never would be (some wounds run too deep to do anything but pretend), but at least he wasn’t pretending not to look at Seth like a kicked puppy.

They had been brothers, so of course he noticed (with a little more smugness than was fair) the way the champ glanced across the tables with the nonchalance of an angry rhino whenever Renee was around, but he also noted with grim satisfaction (childish fucking glee may have been more accurate) that he made no moves to interrupt the blossoming warmth.

They had been brothers, and the others may have been something else, but betrayal cuts both ways, and it was rare to watch such poetic justice flower before one’s own eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Spiteful Roman gives me life. Also I have a problem with parentheticals in that I can't stop using them. I'm sorry.


End file.
